Dustings #153

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I was scrolling through YouTube and came across this video, which is apparently a tribute to the late David Regal.

I hadn't heard that David died, but certainly he must be dead, right? Craig wouldn't have used the past tense in both the thumbnail and the title if David were still alive.

By definition you can't use the past tense to describe someone who never stops doing something unless they're dead. Because until they die, they're still doing it. Which, if I remember correctly, is sort of the whole point of the present tense.

Anyway, sad news. Does anyone know where the family is asking people to send donations in his memory? And has anyone told David?

Ooh, look. Luke Oseland has an actual version of the dumb idea I posted on Tuesday.

Which is good, because I can tell you from experience that trying to attach a lubed-up condom and an empty condom wrapper to a piece of elastic to make a pull is both disgusting and entirely fruitless.

A lot of people say real magic doesn’t exist. Okay, then explain this video, which clearly shows what happened when Dani DaOrtiz and Mat Franco accidentally swapped bodies after touching a magical fortune-telling machine at a carnival.

There is literally no other explanation for this.

Seriously, what is going on there? It’s bonkers. You know how people say you should learn magic from books instead of videos so you don’t accidentally turn into a carbon copy of someone else?

Well… Exhibit A.

{Thanks to Vincenzo R.)

A Long Question with an Unsatisfying Answer

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There's a question I've been meaning to ask you for quite a while, and honestly, I'd almost prefer if you answered it on the blog, because I imagine it's something a lot of magicians have wondered about.

Yesterday, I was hired by a company to perform magic at a tech trade show [...] If I were to rank everything I performed based on audience response, the more immersive experiences you've written about would easily be at the top. Things like "Night-Night Drawings" and "Zoologic Familiars" from Love Letter 18 went over incredibly well.

[...]

Then came the usual reliable stuff that we all know works well, things like "Two Card Monte," "Double Cross," and "iThump."

But here's where things got interesting.

One of the biggest reactions of the entire event came from "Mosaic" by the French Twins [...] But there's a problem.

This is exactly the kind of effect where, if I asked the spectators five minutes later, "How do you think that was done?" I suspect a lot of them would say something like, "It's probably just an app."

Maybe they don't know how the app works, and maybe they couldn't reconstruct the actual method, but they've probably landed pretty close to the right category of explanation.

And that brings me to my question.

At what point is it worth removing an effect from your repertoire if it gets a fantastic reaction in the moment, but you suspect that shortly afterward, a good number of spectators will arrive at an explanation that's reasonably close to the actual method?

I have the same issue with "Inception."

Years ago, it worked incredibly well for me, but nowadays, after performing it, I sometimes overhear spectators whispering things like, "You know those bone-conduction earpieces they sell? Maybe it's something like that. I don't know how he knew the word, but there must be some kind of earpiece involved."

[...]

What should matter more when choosing our repertoire: the immediate reaction, or the memory that remains once someone has had a little time to rationalize what they witnessed?

[...]

Imagine you perform something for a girl, she has an amazing reaction, but later a friend of hers tells you that, a few minutes afterward, she said, "I think I know how he did that."

Even if her explanation wasn't technically correct, but was close enough to make the effect feel less impossible in her mind, would that make you stop performing it?

So, to sum up, I guess my question is:

To what extent is a great reaction in the moment worth it if the spectator is likely to come up with a plausible explanation just a few minutes later?—DM

This is going to be an unsatisfying answer, because ultimately, only you can decide how much you care about fooling people five minutes after you've finished fooling them.

The important first step is recognizing the issue. It’s surprising to me how many magicians seem to only care about the three seconds immediately following the conclusion of the magic trick. That moment of surprise where their eyes get big and their jaws drop. The moment you see on the demo videos.

This feels like success, right? The trick worked.

But we can’t say that yet. All we know at this point is that something surprising happened. We don't know if we've actually fooled them.

They haven’t yet processed the trick. That reaction is just the first step. That’s the face of someone who’s genuinely fooled. It’s also the face of someone who’s about to figure out exactly how you did it. The problem is, at that moment, those two people look identical.

In 2019, I did a five-part series on how to make your magic as strong as possible. In that series, I described the Surprise-Astonishment-Mystery pathway of spectator reactions.

  1. Surprise: A spectator’s immediate reaction to a trick is Surprise.

  2. Astonishment: If they can’t explain or undermine what they witnessed using their own knowledge and reasoning, Surprise becomes Astonishment.

  3. Mystery: If they also can’t explain it through external sources—Googling, watching YouTube videos, asking around—or they simply don’t go looking for an explanation, Astonishment gradually becomes Mystery.

So there are two gauntlets a trick must survive: the spectator’s internal knowledge and logic, and the external resources they might turn to for an explanation.

Survive the first, and you get Astonishment. Survive both, and you have the potential to create a lasting Mystery.

When you’re performing professional walkaround magic, do you care about anything past that initial Surprise reaction?

Maybe not. You’re probably never going to see these people again. By the time they've started working out how you did the trick, you're three tables away.

As an amateur, things are different. You live with your audience. They’re your family, friends, and coworkers.

I go out of my way to avoid tricks that suffer from the Surprise Fizzle. I would much rather do a trick that gets a 7 reaction and stays a 7 in their memory than one that gets a 10 in the moment but drops to a 2 once they decide it was probably just an app or some gimmick.

Of course, it’s uncomfortable when someone you know figures out your trick. But I actually think it feels more awkward for them to have some idea of how a trick was done. They don't want to embarrass you by busting you on it. But they also don't want to play along and pretend they're baffled by something they've more or less figured out. So now you've just created this weird little social situation. This is why I always prioritize the longevity of the reaction over the initial impact of the effect.

But you’re asking about performing professionally. I don’t think there’s a universal rule here or any way I can tell you what you should do.

But I can tell you this...

For years now, I’ve heard some professionals say that they don’t care if people figure out a trick after it’s over. They don’t care if the spectators assume the deck or the coins or whatever are gimmicked. They don’t care if they Google the trick after they leave the table. “I’m just there to entertain,” they will say. “If they were entertained, that’s all that matters.”

Fair enough. But here’s the thing… I’ve never heard someone say, “I was so entertained by the magician whose tricks I more or less figured out.”

And, in fact, in almost every focus group we’ve done that collects information about how fooling a trick is and how enjoyable a trick is, there has been a direct correlation between the two.

With that in mind, I wouldn’t keep tricks in my repertoire (amateur or professional) that I didn’t think had fooling longevity.

Of course, if I found something that had a tremendous initial Surprise reaction but I suspected it faltered soon after, I wouldn’t just immediately toss it. I’d see if there were ways to account for the transparency of the method and salvage that initial surprise with a more layered, less easily dismissed method that kept the mystery alive longer.

The Tribunal

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I’ve never wanted to do “guest posts” on this site. It felt like a bad habit to get into. It starts with me reluctantly agreeing to post someone else’s stuff. Then, before long, I’m begging people to send me something—anything—so I can take the day off. And eventually I’m posting every dumb thing that lands in my inbox just so I don’t have to write and can spend the afternoon on YouTube watching police bodycam footage of drunk Karens getting arrested.

And, of course, I’d have to pretend I was genuinely intrigued by whatever I was posting. “Today I have a fascinating guest post to share with you. Have you ever wondered what thickness of billet paper holds the sharpest crease when folded? I know I sure have. Well, thankfully, magician and amateur paper enthusiast Geoff Crim has written an in-depth examination of this very subject, which I’m thrilled to share with you today.”

And even if I managed to resist that temptation, I’d end up in an almost worse position: having to tell people, “Sorry, this isn’t good enough for the site.” I don’t particularly enjoy shitting on other people’s ideas. So it was always easier to have a blanket policy: “I don’t do guest posts.”

Last month, while writing a mailbag response to someone asking for advice about starting a “similar project” to this one, I started questioning this long-standing policy. And I realized that most of my concerns would disappear if I simply took the decision out of my own hands. If I had a panel of three people who could read or watch submissions and decide whether they were worth posting, then I could leave all those decisions to them.

So I reached out to a few magicians you know and asked if they’d be willing to serve in this capacity. They agreed. And that’s how things will work going forward.

If you have an excerpt from a book, a trick, or a technique you’d like to share, send it to me. I’ll pass it along to the Tribunal and let them decide whether it’s worth posting.

(One note: I’m not looking for theory pieces. This blog is so closely associated with my voice and perspective that I think it would be confusing to have someone else weighing in with their own abstract ideas about magic.)

If the Tribunal unanimously agrees that your submission is great, then I’ll happily post it.

Wait… it has to be great?

Yes.

But you post stupid shit all the time.

Yes. And this is the outlet for my stupid shit. Not yours.

Look, I’ve spent years building an audience willing to put up with my dipshittery. If you want people to put up with yours, you have to build your own audience. If you want to borrow mine, you have to bring something better.

This is likely not going to happen very often, if at all. But if it does, what I’m trying to do is create a win-win-win situation for everyone.

The readers get a great piece of content from someone whose work they might not have encountered otherwise.

The person submitting gets a chance to share their ideas with 1000s of readers and potentially generate interest in whatever else they might be working on.

And I get to spend the afternoon watching a 53-year-old woman in a leopard-print blouse explain to six police officers that they have no jurisdiction over her because she pays their salaries.

Wrap It Up 2.0

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One of the greatest tricks ever, in my opinion, is Wrap It Up by Jay Sankey.

The first time I saw it, Sankey himself performed it live at a lecture. I genuinely felt like I saw a chewed piece of gum placed on a wrapper, tossed into the air, rewrap itself, and become unchewed. The illusion was perfect. I truly felt like I saw and heard the wrapper snapping itself back around the gum.

And the logic makes sense: You don’t want to have to keep buying gum, so you reuse the same piece over and over.

But is it… you know… adult enough?

Chewing gum is fine for Junior, but what about me? A virile man who doesn’t want to spread his seed?

Introducing… Wrap It Up: Jerx Edition.

After intercourse, pretend to remove your rubber, place it on the open condom wrapper, and restore it.

“I’ve been using the same one since college,” you say proudly, “and it’s still mostly intact.”

Mailbag #184

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I ordered the Lip Balm from SansMinds after reading issue #5 of Keepers.

I have no idea how up to date you are on their customer service, so I thought I would briefly share my experience with them, which other users on the Green Café apparently share.

I have now sent dozens of emails without receiving a single reply. The dashboard they announced in the meantime, which was supposed to provide updates on the waiting lists, still does not work. I have therefore had to open a dispute with PayPal in the hope of getting my money back. Judging by reports online, many others are in the same boat.

Just a heads-up for you. Perhaps the next time you recommend a SansMinds product, you could add a disclaimer that their customer service is not always great for us mere mortals. —MH

Yeah, obviously I can only speak from my own experience when I’m writing up my experience with a product/company. I had no issues getting the trick, but I was ordering it early on, before it caught on.

But, thankfully, no companies ever send me free shit, so I’m perfectly happy calling them out when they need to be.

At the moment, on their website, they say:

Shipping status: waitlist in effect.

We are currently catching up on previous orders. Once we are all caught up, we will be opening orders again.

So at least they’re not taking more orders. But yeah, there’s no reason not to communicate with your customers.

The company folded amidst some controversy a few years ago. You would think that upon their revival—and armed with a product a lot of people seem to enjoy—they’d be doing a better job protecting their reputation. But that would require dramatically overestimating the business acumen of magic companies.

So yeah, I’d definitely steer clear of this company until they get their shit sorted out. Or forever, depending on your tolerance for risk.

For my birthday my girlfriend said we could watch anything I wanted to watch, so I made her sit through the performances on an old Paul Harris video I’ve always loved from the 80s. She hated it. Said it wasn’t funny etc. I thought she was just being difficult so I had some friends watch it with me later that weekend. They weren’t into it either. Some of them didn’t even understand what I liked about it. Am I crazy?—PM

Back on my old blog I was going to do a recurring feature where I had non-magicians watch performers that we, as magicians, tend to admire. I did it once. Then I tried it again later, showing them a bunch of performers—including Paul Harris and Jay Sankey (two guys I love)—and the results were so disheartening I pretty much abandoned the idea.

In the years since, it’s become increasingly obvious to me that a lot of the performers magicians love don’t necessarily move the needle much for laypeople. And vice versa, for that matter.

The problem is, when you watch those old Paul Harris Stars of Magic videos, you’re not just watching the performance in front of you. You’re watching Paul Harris—the guy who created a huge amount of the magic you love. You know the ideas behind the tricks and how influential he was. You’re predisposed to find his whole vibe charming because you already have enormous affection for the guy and his work.

To someone who doesn’t know or care who Paul Harris is, they’re watching a low-energy guy who seems permanently sutured to a script full of corny jokes. Of course that’s not necessarily going to play in 2026.

That doesn’t mean you’re crazy for loving it. It just means you’re responding to more than the performance itself. You’re seeing the performer through the accumulated glow of everything he means to you as a magician. Your girlfriend is just seeing some dude doing card tricks and saying weird shit.

Re: The Impossible Bottle mentioned in last week’s mailbag

I have a collection of genuine impossible bottles in my curio cabinet. They include pieces by Harry Eng, Jamie Grant, Jeff Scanlan, and other creators of impossible bottles. There’s everything from decks of cards and padlocks to tennis balls inside them.

Almost 100% of the time, when a non-magician looks at one of these bottles, they assume, and usually say out loud, that somehow the bottle itself was altered. In the case of these genuine impossible bottles, they’re wrong.

But that assumption creates a real problem if the method actually does involve altering the bottle. It becomes almost impossible to leave the spectator with something that can withstand close examination. There will nearly always be a fine seam or some other telltale evidence. A bottle has a relatively large circumference, which gives someone a lot of surface area to inspect. No matter how fine the seam is, there’s a good chance someone examining the bottle carefully will eventually find it.

One way around that problem is to put something inside the bottle that the spectator would have to break the bottle to retrieve—such as a wedding ring. If you put my $100 watch inside, I might decide it’s worth sacrificing the watch to keep this incredible impossible object intact. But I’m certainly not going to make that choice with my wedding ring.

That distinction is important. If the object inside is valuable or personally meaningful enough that the owner is unwilling to abandon it, breaking the bottle becomes inevitable. And once the bottle has to be broken, the question of whether it can withstand examination becomes irrelevant.—XX

I see the logic here. But there are a couple of considerations to using this approach as well.

The first is a practical one. It may be that the preparation of the bottle becomes obvious when it’s broken. Meaning, maybe it breaks along a seam in some odd way. So instead of destroying the evidence of the method, you've just exposed it.

The second consideration is an artistic one. Putting an object in a bottle is particularly interesting because it’s a piece of magic that gets frozen in time. It's a permanent impossibility. Turning that into something that has to be destroyed five minutes later feels like throwing away one of the best things about the effect.

Now, you could try to frame it as some profound philosophical dilemma. Like, “Ah, now we’re faced with a question. Will you leave your wedding ring in the bottle, preserving this impossible object for eternity? Or will you shatter the glass, reclaim your ring, and consign this little miracle to the fragile realm of memory?”

But of course, that's not a real dilemma for anyone. They're going to want their shit back. Nobody's sacrificing their wedding ring to preserve the profound artistic statement you think you've made when you were fiddling around with your special bottle in the bag.

Dustings #152

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How to respond to your wife after she finds out you bought a $2500 Impossible Bottle in Big Bag trick.

GLOMM Lodge #6, The Demon Horses, has now been established in Denver, Co.

Here is a potentially valuable resource (as long as they maintain it), that some of you who aren’t AI fans may find valuable. It’s a list of magic books that use AI for the covers and/or content.

(Thanks to Aaron S.)

If Justin Flom ever wants to destroy his career in a way that’s perfectly on-brand, he should post a video of himself drilling a hole in a bathroom wall, then walk us through the hidden camera system he’s installing to watch women take a shit.

Justification Judo

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  • “Why do I have to write it down?”

  • “Why do I have to look at a word in a book?”

  • “Why do I have to choose an image from one of those cards?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, why can’t I just think of a word or a picture and you tell me what it is?”

“Okay… so, just like one word floating around somewhere in your head? Not a specific one you saw or wrote down?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, that's not really a thing. I mean, you see that in comic books and movies, but that's just pretend. That's not how this stuff works in real life.”

This is an easy way to take the energy out of any challenges you might get with mentalism.

You’re not explaining why you can’t do the impossible version. You’re explaining that the impossible version is the fake one. The version without any procedure isn't more impressive. It doesn’t actually exist.

Once you label the cleaner, more impossible version as “fake,” the procedure you use stops looking like a weakness. The fact that they have to write something down, look at a word, or choose an image is now framed as evidence that you’re doing something more legitimate, not less impressive.

If they say, “I saw someone on TV do it,” you can just shrug and say, “Oh sure. There are a million ways to fake that stuff. Mostly they're just using actors. But I'm not really interested in that. I'm more interested in trying things that feel like real mind reading but use more genuine techniques.”

This takes the air out of the idea that you should be able to read their mind without any procedure at all. And the nice thing is, saying you’re doing something that feels like mind reading but uses “more genuine techniques” is a completely honest description of doing magic. You’re not lying about anything. And if someone wants to imagine those “more genuine techniques” involve something psychological, scientific, or occult rather than a little pencil lead stuck to your thumb, well, that’s their interpretation. So be it.